Vane spins me around and pulls me against him. “She looked weaker,” he whispers. “Kind of pale and greasy. But not like someone who’s . . .”
“Dying,” I finish for him.
My mother is dying.
A slow, painful, horrifying death.
But she’s a murderer, I remind myself.
A cold, cruel monster who killed Vane’s parents and cost my father his life and let me blame myself for all of it.
And if I’d been weaker, she would’ve killed me.
But . . . does that mean she deserves to be eaten alive by the winds?
The winds.
“How could you do that?” I ask, turning to Os. “How could you ruin the wind?”
I can still hear the Easterly’s mindless wailing after Aston shattered it in front of me—still remember the restless spinning of the devouring winds in the Maelstrom.
“I thought my heart might break along with them,” Os whispers. “But my first priority is to protect our people, and your mother was uncontainable without the Maelstrom. I used the absolute bare minimum of winds that I could, stopping the second I had enough.”
“And how many was that?” I ask.
Os’s hand darts to his scar, his fingers tracing the thin red lines. “Twelve.”
Twelve.
Twelve times he called the wind to his side.
Twelve times he let them sweep around him like loyal friends, then watched them writhe and scream before their songs fell silent.
Tears blur my vision and I don’t want to smear them away. I don’t want to look at the man who could do something that horrible twelve times.
But the tears fall on their own when Os tells me, “Believe me, their cries will haunt me until my dying day. And I keep hoping that there’s a way to restore them. Perhaps with the power of four, or . . . just, somehow. I refuse to believe they’ll forever be this way.”
I can hear his grief in every crack in his voice.
He doesn’t seem like the power-crazed monster Aston described, but . . .
Hadn’t he been threatening to break our bond only a few minutes ago?
Aston sent me to Death Valley so I could see Raiden’s Maelstrom—see the depths of his horrors and the level the Gales would have to sink to in order to defeat him.
Is that what’s happening?
My knees can’t seem to hold me any longer, but Vane catches me and carries me to the bed. He lays me down and I want to pull the blankets over my head and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I settle for pulling him next to me and leaning against his side, soaking up as much of his heat as I can.
“Are you okay?” he whispers.
I’m not sure how to answer.
I feel like I’ve just found out the sky is green, and can never see blue the same way again.
Os clears his throat. “We’re wasting precious time. None of this is going to help us face down Raiden.”
“You’re right,” Vane agrees after a second. “But we will be talking about all of this with the Gales when we’re done. No more secrets—for any of us.”
“As you wish, Your Highness,” Os says, his voice almost sounding sincere as he dips his head in a bow.
That’s when I realize why my world has turned sideways.
Not because of my mother. I lost the real her years ago in the same storm that stole my father.
Because of Os.
I don’t trust him.
I’ve dedicated my entire life to the service of the Gales—sacrificed food, water, even my childhood.
But I believe what Aston told me about ruining the winds coming at a cost.
No matter how careful Os was, he will still have to pay it.
“So . . . I guess we’re ready to go,” Vane’s mom says from the doorway, startling me back to the present.
She stands next to Vane’s dad, suitcases piled at her feet along with a thick stack of books.
Vane smiles sadly. “I don’t think you’ll need the family photo albums.”
“We thought it might be a good idea this time to bring the things we can’t replace,” she says quietly, and from the way she’s staring at Vane I can tell she wants to shove him in her bag and take him with her.
Instead she runs over and strangles Vane with a hug until he reminds her that he needs to breathe and she finally lets him go.
I’m completely caught off guard when she throws her arms around me.
“Take care of yourself, too,” she whispers.
Tears burn my eyes and I find myself hugging her tight before she pulls away. “We’ll see you soon.”
“You’d better,” Vane’s dad says before he wraps his arms around us both. “Try not to destroy the house.”
Vane forces a laugh. “Dang, there go all my plans.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” his mom says, lifting a tattered shred of black fabric from the top of her suitcase. “I’m so sorry. I guess your clothes can’t go in the washing machine. . . .”
It takes me a second to realize the scrap she’s holding is what’s left of my uniform, and another after that to realize my mistake. I’d forgotten that groundlings use machines for their washing instead of water and air. Our porous fabric must not be able to hold up.
“It’s fine,” I tell her, even though I have no idea what I’ll wear now. My shelter had nowhere to hide possessions, so I only had the one uniform. “I’ll figure something out. Maybe the Gales have an extra—”
“We’ve been keeping all the supplies at the Dustlands Base,” Os interrupts. “It’s an hour away from here.”
“I still have your jacket,” Vane offers, pointing to a crushed pile of black on the floor next to his bed. “But that’s probably not going to help much.”
“I’m sure I can make your mother’s pants work if I have a belt.”
Solana lets out a slow, heavy sigh. “Or, I have a few extra dresses.”
She doesn’t actually offer them, but Vane still tells her, “That would be awesome!” and before I can argue, she nods like it’s settled.
Vane’s parents rush through a teary goodbye—making Vane promise he’ll remember to text them this time. Then the house is quiet and Vane watches from his window as they drive away.
The tense line of his shoulders makes me want to hug him. But Solana turns to me. “My stuff’s in the living room.”
She looks about as thrilled with this arrangement as I am, which somehow makes it easier to follow her down the hall. Until she shows me my choices.
One is nothing more than a tube of shiny teal—and not nearly enough of that. Another is sheer peach and dips almost as low in the front as it does in the back. And the third is bright red.
I’m positive it would take the fabric from all three to actually cover me—especially considering I’m at least two inches taller than her. But, clearly, the point of these dresses is to be seen.
And to catch the eye of a certain Westerly king.
The thought has me reaching for the red one, though I tell myself it’s mostly because it looks longer than the others.
I realize on my way to the bathroom that I’d forgotten about my black shifting dress, tucked away in the eaves of my old shelter. I want to believe that I don’t switch to that because I don’t want to waste any time—and not because I want Vane to see me in something new. But if I’m being honest, the thought did cross my mind.
Apparently, I am turning into one of “those girls.”
I’m even more disgusted with myself when I slip the silky red fabric over my head and glance in the mirror. The V of the neckline dips low enough to make me blush, and the thin straps tie around my neck, leaving my shoulders—and most of my back—bare. The sides at least come up high enough to cover my bandage, and the skirt is longer than the other dress options—but only in the back. In the front it cuts much higher, and the flowy design has me wondering what I’m supposed to do if I catch an updraft.